AT&T Adds 4G LTE to 15 Markets November 20th

AT&T announced Monday that it will be adding 4G LTE coverage to 15 markets on November 20th. The company has been playing catchup to its chief rival, Verizon Wireless, which began rolling out significant 4G coverage in the U.S. earlier this year.

On the above map, the orange circles and stars mark current and coming 4G markets (Click the image for a larger version)

4G LTE is a next generation wireless technology that allows significantly faster data throughput than 3G wireless networks. Apple’s iPhone product line doesn’t yet support LTE, or any other 4G network, in part because battery performance on LTE networks has heretofore been horrendous.

With AT&T, Apple’s first and largest iPhone partner, committed to rolling out its own significant 4G coverage in the U.S. in 2013, and with another year of development to work out battery performance issues, Apple’s impetus to bring 4G to the iPhone will have increased, making this development of interest to iPhone owners, as well as to users of Android devices that already support the technology.

Apparently my area, Oklahoma City, is one of the places picked for release. This morning, a news report talked about the great speed everyone is going to have now, neglecting to tell people they will probably need a new phone to access it. They also said nothing of the battery life when using LTE. This kind of misinformation and half-ass reported information does much more harm than just not running the story in the first place.